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Machinist

White marble statue of machinist with hammer, anvil, and cogs.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • White marble statue of machinist with hammer, anvil, and cogs.

Date:

c. 1859

Artist:

Emma Stebbins
American, 1815–1882

About this artwork

Emma Stebbins was a member of the community of women sculptors in Rome. Like their male colleagues, these women emulated the statues of antiquity, seeing in them the highest form of art. This rare pair of marble statues portrays a laborer and his apprentice, an unusual theme in mid-nineteenth-century American sculpture. Stebbins’s innovative conceit was to render a modern subject—the profession of the machinist—in the refined, Neoclassical visual language traditionally used to depict biblical, historical, and mythological subjects. Both figures can be identified as machinists by their clothing: cap, work shirt, leather apron, and long pants. The senior machinist holds a forging hammer and toothed gear, the means and ends of his labor; the young apprentice demonstrates his ability to improve on his teacher’s experience with a compass and drawing stylus. By using a Neoclassical idiom to represent a new, machine-based profession practiced by two generations of workers, Stebbins celebrated the possibilities of innovation and suggested the peaceful coexistence of traditional labor and mechanization.

Status

On View, Gallery 171

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

Emma Stebbins

Title

Machinist

Place

United States (Artist's nationality)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

c. 1859

Medium

Marble

Dimensions

74.9 × 29.2 × 29.2 cm (29 1/2 × 11 1/2 × 11 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Antiquarian Society

Reference Number

2000.13.1

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/154237/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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